landholding concepts

Domesday Book is largely about landowners
and their estates, both before and after 1066. It represents
Anglo-Saxon and Norman landholding in very different terms. The nature
and terminology of landholding in 1086 is relatively straight-forward.
Domesday Book has been called a 'blueprint for a feudalsociety', an observation prompted by a structure which represents landed society after the Conquest as based strictly upon tenure: tenants-in-chiefheld their fiefsfrom the Crown, tenantsheld manorsfrom
tenants-in-chief, and the occasional subtenant held his manor from the
tenant immediately above him on the feudal ladder. Every man had his
lord, and his lord was the man from whom he held his land, very probably
the lord who had granted him that land within living memory. It was a
structure of great simplicity, and for a generation or two bore some
relationship, if distant at times, to the real world.

The nature and terminology of Anglo-Saxon landholding, on the other
hand, are less easy to grasp and were expressed in a bewildering variety
of formulae. In essence, Anglo-Saxon lordship was based upon personal
bonds rather than land tenure, though tenure did enter into some
relationships. The predominance of personal ties was simply a reflection
of the fact that Anglo-Saxon landed society had deep roots. Most
landowners would have inherited their estates, and few probably knew how
their ancestors came by them. Lordship - a legal requirement on all men
- was therefore a matter of choice, a bond of commendationforged
from self interest: lords needed men to serve them, men needed
patronage and protection. Anglo-Saxon lordship was of the bastard feudal
variety into which Anglo-Norman society would quickly evolve.

In these circumstances, the wholesale disinheritance of the English
landed classes after the Conquest was bound to give rise to disputes
over title. A Norman granted the estates of one Anglo-Saxon magnate was
tempted to treat the estates of that magnate's men as part of the grant.
Others might claim the estates of the same men on different grounds -
that they were dependenciesof
manors owned by another Anglo-Saxon magnate, for instance. There were
practical reasons, therefore, for collecting data on Anglo-Saxon
landholding in 1086; but the complexity, variety, and inconsistency of
what was collected showed that the commissionersstruggled with this task and in some circuitsabandoned the attempt entirely.

For more detail, see Sir Fredrick Pollock and F.W. Maitland, The history of English law before the time of Edward I (second edition, 1898); Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and vassals: the medieval evidence reinterpreted (1994); and Judith A. Green, The aristocracy of Norman England (1997).